Kerala

Boos, catcalls greet Kerala's accused serial killer Jolly

Published:11 October 2019

In her first day of police custody, serial killer Jolly Thomas along with two other accused were taken by Kerala Police on Friday to six places as part of evidence collection, where huge crowds waited for hours to have her glimpse.

Kozhikode (Kerala) | In her first day of police custody, serial killer Jolly Thomas along with two other accused were taken by Kerala Police on Friday to six places as part of evidence collection, where huge crowds waited for hours to have her glimpse.
On Thursday, a lower court here remanded Jolly and her two accomplices -- M.S. Mathew, who procured cyanide, and jewellery store worker Praju Kumar -- to six-day police custody for the murder of Jolly's husband Roy Thomas.
The evidence collection trip, which began Friday morning, ended around 5 p.m. and Jolly was escorted back to the police base camp at Vadakara near here.
All the mysterious deaths took place in the family of retired government official Tom Thomas, while all six dead bodies were exhumed last week for the investigations.
The first in the family to die in 2002 was Thomas' wife and Jolly's mother-in-law Annamma, a retired teacher. She was followed by Jolly's father-in-law, Tom Thomas, in 2008. In 2011, their son and Jolly's husband, Roy Thomas, also died to be followed by the death of Roy's maternal uncle, Mathew, who died in 2014.
The two-year-old child of Sily, a relative by marriage, died the following year, while Sily passed away in 2016.
It was only on Friday that the police registered five separate cases of murder, while the current evidence collection is part of the case that has been registered in the death of Jolly's first husband Roy Thomas.
A police convoy of vehicles with the three accused arrived on FRiday at Koodathai, where the house had been sealed by the police last week, soon after Jolly's arrest.
A 100-strong police force kept guard as a large crowd of neighbours and locals were waiting for almost three hours outside Jolly's home. The police team was accompanied by forensic experts and sources said they were able to recover a bottle of pesticide, which has been impounded by the probe team.
The autopsy of the bodies have revealed presence of cyanide. According to police sources, Jolly has confessed that she, at times, used to consume liquor along with Mathew and, on one occasion, had mixed cyanide in his liquor, after consuming which he died.
According to her confession, Jolly had mixed cyanide in Sily's drinking water and the latter too had died soon thereafter, the police source added.
During here stay here, Jolly had maintained all through that she was a lecturer at the NIT Kozhikode.
"We were under the impression that she was a lecturer at the NIT Kozhikode and by and large she was always seen as a person who was quiet, said a bystander waiting outside Jolly's home.
At the police brought Jolly to the NIT campus, the hundreds of people waiting to see her greeted her with boos and jeers.
Kerala Police chief Loknath Behra told the media in the state capital that the probe is progressing satisfactorily and he will be reaching Kozhikode to oversee the investigations.
"The probe is going well and our aim is to ensure that all the evidence is collected, while the outcome of the scientific tests are awaited," he said.
The police began the probe into these deaths after Roy Thomas' brother, Rojo, now settled in the US, approached the Superintendent of Police and voiced his suspicions about the series of mysterious deaths.
Rojo, who has been asked by the police to return from the US to help in the investigation, is expected to arrive here shortly.
The police have sent the exhumed remains of the deceased for forensic examination. Initial reports have indicated poisoning as cause of the deaths.